June 26, 2024 • 43 mins
Summary
In this conversation, Jeff Utecht and Julia Pardo discuss investment strategies and the importance of not comparing oneself to others on social media. They emphasize the need to focus on personal goals and preferences when it comes to real estate investing. Jeff shares his experience of buying a fixer-upper property and realizing the potential for forced appreciation. Julia highlights the significance of location and cash flow in her investment decisions. They also discuss the importance of finding properties with vacant units and setting the rent at market value. They talk about the importance of finding creative financing options, such as commercial loans, and the potential benefits of refinancing when interest rates drop. They also emphasize the value of taking calculated risks and making sacrifices in order to build long-term wealth through real estate. The conversation highlights the need to trust the process, gather information, and find the right path for individual success in real estate investing.
Takeaways
- Don't compare yourself to others on social media when it comes to real estate investing.
- Focus on your own goals and preferences.
- Forced appreciation can be a powerful strategy in real estate investing. Buying fixer-upper properties and improving them can lead to significant equity growth.
- Location is a critical factor to consider in real estate investing. Look for areas with high demand and potential for appreciation.
- Cash flow is an important metric to evaluate when investing in rental properties. Aim for positive cash flow and consider the potential for rent increases over time.
- Finding properties with vacant units allows for greater control over setting the rent at market value and maximizing cash flow. Finding creative financing options, such as commercial loans, can be beneficial in real estate investing.
- Refinancing when interest rates drop can lead to lower mortgage payments and increased cash flow.
- Taking calculated risks and making sacrifices are necessary steps in building long-term wealth through real estate.
- Trusting the process, gathering information, and finding the right path are key to success in real estate investing.
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Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
(00:02):
All right, welcome back to the Washingtonstate real estate investing podcast.
So excited today.
It's just Julie and I having someconversations around investment,
investment strategies, different ways youcan get started.
And maybe even as we've kind of talkedhere before we got started, how to not
feel bad about yourself.
(00:22):
cause it is, it's, it's very easy.
And Julia, we were talking before we gotstarted.
It's very easy to see things on tick tockor see things on Instagram or.
Get a newsletter where people are sayingI'm making this much money.
I'm making this much money and we start toTake that on as our own of I'm not good
enough or where I'm at isn't good enoughand we start to internalize that and
(00:45):
that's always one of the biggest issueswith I think our social media diets is
Trying to remember that people only postthe great stuff You know and Just as we
get into this episode today
I just like thinking about that.
It's some of the work I actually do withschool districts and my other job is
(01:06):
talking to students about this, right?
It's just like, you have to understandthat nobody ever posts the bad stuff
online or very rarely.
It's always the picture perfect.
Everything is going so well for me andeverything that I'm doing that we don't
always get to see the behind the scenesstruggle of what it took to get there or
what is the real things that are going on.
(01:28):
Yeah, no, that's a great point.
I also just think it's really sexy andglamorous to put out there.
I work one to two hours a week and I makethis much money and look at my home and
look at all these things.
Look at how many doors I have.
And, you know, that newsletter that weboth received, I didn't even dissect it
(01:48):
the way you did.
I just let it make me feel bad immediatelythinking, I work more than that and I
don't make enough and it can feel.
defeating and I know that a lot of theinvestors that I follow to real estate
moguls, right, are very, they like topreach that they barely work and they make
a lot of money.
And I know I work more than one to twohours a week.
(02:11):
You know, sometimes I feel like I work 50to 60 hours a week and it's, it's tough.
And of course the goal is to one day be inmore of a financial freedom place where
we're not working so hard, but to getthere.
it's, you know, boots on the ground, wegotta go.
it takes effort.
It takes time, you know, and it is, and,and, you know, we all need mentors.
(02:33):
We all need something to strive for.
And we set goals for ourselves of where wewant to be at certain times.
And maybe we'll get into that today of howmy wife and I kind of set mini goals to
get to where we are today.
but understand that they're goals, right?
And, and things are going to happen inlife.
And it just is, you know, my wife and Ijust had, our anniversary and during our
anniversary, we always sit down and bejust like last year when we planned out
(02:56):
the next year,
We didn't even end up close to where wethought we were going to be because this
thing called life happens to you.
And some things turned out better.
Some things turned out worse.
And that's just living life, right?
And that's the excitement of living lifeand where you're at.
but we did get this letter today and itwas very interesting cause Julie and I
were talking before we both got this samenewsletter today.
(03:17):
And, in the newsletter, the person talksabout that they are, they own 225 cash
flowing units and they cash flow.
roughly $13 ,000 a month.
And so Julie and I were breaking thatdown.
And it comes out that there are cashflowing about $58 per door, which doesn't
sound like a whole lot.
I mean, yes, you have 225 doors, youprobably have very little money in or I
(03:42):
don't know how much money is actuallyinvested in these.
We don't know they don't give us that wedon't know how much money is invested in
there.
But we're looking at $58 per door.
And it's just one of those things you haveto start when you see numbers.
You have to go into the numbers and say,well, really is that good?
And for some people, they're like, that'sgreat.
For my wife and I, that's, that's notgood.
My wife and I have 18 doors and wecashflow on average, 650 bucks a door.
(04:08):
So even though I don't have 225 doors, I'mcash flowing more than this person is
every single month because we've, we'vetaken a different route in real estate
investing.
And I think that's the cool thing aboutreal estate.
Yeah.
Yeah, you want to lay your own floors.
You want to do your tile.
You want to be involved.
And you do delegate because we needsanity, right?
(04:31):
And you make sure that you have, you know,you have a property manager and things
like that.
But you know, this other person, I'dassume they hire everybody for everything,
which is great.
But because of that, they need morevolume.
And I definitely had the shiny Audra.
object syndrome where I saw those numbersand I thought, man, I don't, I own two
(04:54):
doors.
I'm lame in comparison to his 225 doors.
And you are the one who actually dissectedthat, looked at the math and it's like,
wow, like I actually, I don't have aninterest in owning that many doors because
that's not my goal.
Like I also like to be hands -on.
I like to be involved and we do our ownproperty managements.
We're only at two doors one day.
(05:14):
That's definitely something I hope todelegate out, but it's just,
It's just, we all have to make thosechoices.
And so it's important not to getfrustrated or feel like you're not doing
enough just based on the shiny numbers andto really look at it.
So I'm glad you brought that up.
yeah.
And I think it's always something to belooking for.
(05:36):
you know, my wife and I, we've never hada, a door number when we started
investing, we never said we want to reachthis many doors.
We've always set these goals for ourselvesto get to specific places and then however
many doors that takes.
And the reason why I think for us, thatapproach has worked.
And again, there's a million differentways to do it.
(05:57):
But for my wife and I is because.
Some doors are, you know, some doors arecash flowing more than others.
We have a single family that cash flows $2,000 a month.
And we've got a fourplex that only cashes,you know, like, like $400 per door per
month, but it's a fourplex, right?
And so it's not so many how many doors,we've got a number that we're looking for.
(06:22):
And if that, if we can do that number with20 doors, fantastic.
If we can do that number with 35 doors,that's what...
that's how many doors it's going to take.
And so I think, you know, it's great thatyou have 225 doors and we know real estate
investors have way more than that and goodon them.
But I have no need for the rest of my lifeto take care of 200 doors and just knowing
(06:45):
how much paperwork is in the 18 doors wehave, I can't imagine just that alone
would be enough to be just like, no, I'mnot.
I'm not gonna do this.
And to your point, I think, Nixnick, you,you like doing the hands -on stuff around,
you know, you like the hands -on propertymanagement, and that's great, you know?
I mean, you love that part.
(07:06):
My wife loves the design aspect.
And so for us, the hands -on is the tileand the flooring and being involved in the
design and construction.
When it comes to the day -to -day propertymanagement, that's not our jam, right?
And I think one of the things that I talkabout when I talk about with...
this with real estate investors is there'skind of four things when you start your
(07:28):
real estate company, because that's reallywhat it is.
There's kind of four quadrants that youwant to think about.
And your goal is to figure out which oneof those quadrants is your passion, and
that's the one you hang on to the most.
And which one do you hate doing?
And the one you hate doing is the firstone you hire out, whatever that looks
like.
(07:49):
Because there's going to be things thatyou're not going to like to do.
but you can do them, right?
Like the accounting, I don't like to dothe accounting part of our business, but I
can do it.
I know how to run an Excel sheet.
I've got Stessa that supports us behindthe scenes and I'll take care of that.
And I work with our CPA to do the taxes.
It does not fill my cup in any way, but Ican do that.
(08:10):
My wife and I hate going out and findingproperties as far as like knocking on
doors, finding stuff off market.
That's just too much work for us.
It's not that we can't do it.
It's just like, so.
That's the first thing we've hired out.
And then the other three bowls we dointernally.
Yeah.
(08:32):
Yeah, it'll be interesting to see how Ikind of shape the way what I decide to do
hands on and what I don't becauseobviously for my first property, it fell
out of my hands on what I got to choose.
We didn't have the money really to doproperty management.
It made no sense.
We're living in the same home as ourtenants.
Why not take that process ourselves,right?
And then we hired contractors to do a lotof the work.
(08:54):
And I do wish we had more time to do itourselves because we're
I think our contractors did a really greatjob, but I would have done things
differently.
And so I wish I would have been moreinvolved in that.
And so I'm hoping with, we'll see whatlife allows, right?
Like you said, life's applied for you, butI'm hoping to do our own flooring for this
(09:14):
one.
And I'd love to learn how to do tile too.
So, and redo the shower.
So that's my goal.
I'm trying to get more handy, cause Ithink that it's just fun.
It feels good.
It's rewarding to get that done yourself.
I get intimidated though by not knowing,right?
And so my husband has a YouTube certifiedpatch and he does so much stuff just from
(09:38):
YouTube videos and I needed to startwatching more and figuring it out.
And so I'm hoping with our unit, we havemore time and I can like slowly do the
floors myself and things like that.
We ripped up, we did a lot of demo work,which was fun.
And then you get to decide what is it youreally like.
Like I'll never forget when one of ourfirst flips and we were trying to do a
(09:58):
lot, like we were trying to save as muchmoney.
We were, you know, we were still at acontractor doing the contracting stuff
because you have permits and you have tohave a contractor and plumbers and do all
that.
but I remember we were going to savemoney.
And like my wife talks about this all thetime.
So my brother -in -law and I, because wewere in partnership with my brother -in
-law and sister -in -law on this flip, andso we decided we were going to ourselves
(10:21):
replace all the insulation underneath thehouse.
And so we had to put on, you know, thefull hazmat suits and it was middle of
summer.
It was like 90 degrees outside and we'reunderneath his house ripping out all of
the old insulation.
It was in like 1908 house or something.
And we are both soaking wet.
We are itchy from insulation.
And it was like the most miserableexperience I had ever had to the point
(10:45):
where we got done that day.
And I looked at my wife.
I was like, no way.
This is this is not filling my bucket.
I love working on homes.
This isn't it.
So we called it.
We called an insulation place and it wassomething like eighteen hundred dollars.
And I was like, for eighteen hundredbucks, they can do it.
I mean, but but you you have to almost gothrough those experiences to say like, you
(11:07):
know what?
I don't mind.
piling or I don't mind laying the floors,right?
And, or I don't mind doing this.
I don't mind painting like some peoplelove the painting.
Some people love painting trim.
I mean, whatever it is, you can say Idon't mind doing that part.
But there's other parts.
Yeah.
But there's there'll be other parts whereyou're just like, I hate doing that.
And if you hate doing it, then it's worthpaying somebody else to do.
(11:29):
Yeah, yeah, it's true, but you're right.
You gotta try it out yourself first andwhat it's worth and if you really can get
it done.
I try, I will try painting again.
I will.
I think I know what I did wrong firsttime.
I definitely just underestimated it.
So moving forward, but I'll give it onemore go because not a clue.
(11:50):
But Jeff, I'd love to learn about how yougot started, how you decided to go down
this path.
Yeah, I think, you know, we, we didn'treally decide to go down this path, but
much like everybody, I think we ended upin a situation where we were living
(12:12):
overseas at the time and we were lookingto start transitioning back to the U S
and, we were looking for a place to live,a place to buy.
And we were looking at a condo in downtownSeattle at the time.
And my wife and I had to have this, youknow, a little heart to heart.
I of course wanted not knowing what I knownow.
I wanted turnkey.
(12:32):
I didn't want to have to do any of it.
Not that I can't.
I lived on a farm.
I know how to do a bunch of the work.
but I didn't want to, I just wanted aturnkey place that we could move into.
We were still going to be at least twomore years overseas before we came back.
I didn't want to have to come home everywinter break or come home every summer
break.
Cause we were teachers, to work on theproperty.
(12:53):
I just wanted something that I could.
come home on vacation and relax until.
And my wife was the complete opposite.
She wanted something that she could fixup.
She doesn't like if it's already fixed up,whoever did it, didn't do it her way,
right?
There's always something she wants tochange.
She's just like, I don't like the kitchen.
(13:13):
I don't like the paint.
I don't like, there's always somethingthat she needs to make it hers.
So we had to have these conversations justgetting started around, do we wanna do?
you know, move in ready of which she wouldnever be happy because there's always
something she'd want to do or you'rebuying something and it's a completely
great black backsplash, but it's not abacksplash I love, but it's functional.
(13:39):
And so you're taking out something that'sfunctional just because you don't like the
aesthetic of it.
And that also bothers us because we're notwasteful people.
And so we ended up on the, on her side, aswe usually do of buying these fixer upper
properties.
because if you buy something that'salready trash, you can only make it better
and you get to make it yours.
(14:00):
And you don't feel bad taking out the oldbacksplash because it's probably broken
into million pieces and, and you get to dowhatever you want, right?
Or whatever the cutesiness of it is thatyou want.
So we ended up buying a condo that was ashort sell situation in 2009.
Now 2009 happens to be almost the bottomof the real estate crash.
(14:23):
We have no clue, we are not payingattention.
We live in Thailand.
We have no clue about any of this stuffgoing on, because our apartment in
Thailand is being paid for by our school.
We're just living the great life of livingoverseas.
And we end up buying this short cellapartment that they had tried, horrible
situation, but basically they had a littledog in there.
(14:44):
The dog had peed and pooped everywhere.
They'd shut the water off on the unit.
And so the people in the unit had used thetoilets until they overflowed.
And this is a condo building in downtownSeattle, which also helped us because we
knew, I mean, the condo building itselfwas gorgeous and they had this horrible
tenant that they couldn't get out.
(15:05):
I mean, the place was so bad that therewas a common floor on the second floor, a
common area on like a second floor for thecondo owners.
And that's where the owners of this unithung out because this...
Their unit was so gross by this time.
So it took us, it took us a while to getit under contract with short sales and us
living overseas added a whole nothernightmare.
I mean, why we ever bought a home againafter the craziness we had to go through,
(15:27):
which I won't get into it had to do withlike having to go to an embassy in
Brussels at the last moment.
It was just nuts, to, to get it closed,but we ended up buying this place.
and then we ended up rehabbing it.
And of course in 2012, the market takesoff again.
And next thing we know, we're sitting on aton of equity.
(15:49):
And that's when we first kind ofunderstood how this real estate thing
works.
It's not just, not only did we buysomething and then we were able to
instantly improve it, like forceappreciation by updating it.
We were also then getting the appreciationof what happened here in the market on top
of that.
And so we kind of had this double whammy.
(16:09):
And it was that force appreciation piecethat really stuck out to us.
And that's what started our adventure intothis.
So then we started saying, we startedlistening to podcasts, we started
educating ourselves and this idea of beingable to force appreciation led us into
flips.
So we would flip a property where we couldbuy something that needed a bunch of
renovation.
(16:29):
We'd force that appreciation and then beable to sell it for a profit out the other
end.
And so it was really that like not evenknowing what we were doing.
understanding that we really liked thisidea of being able to do it ourselves and
force that appreciation.
Not everybody wants to do that, but forus, that is down to the property we're
(16:52):
working on right now had a fire in it in2018 and nobody has wanted to buy it
because it's so much work.
And my wife and I have tried to buy ittwice to get to an agreement on the price
that we feel like we can do with it whatwe want.
But it's going to be a lot of work.
Like we're a year in and we, I mean, wemowed the grass.
That's pretty much all we've done in ayear because we have to do permitting and
(17:13):
there was a fire.
So we have to go through all thismitigation stuff.
but that's really been our, if I, if Ihave to boil it down, we look for forest
appreciation properties.
and that works for us.
Yeah, so that condo.
How did I get started?
Yeah, or what's yours?
Are you looking for forest appreciation?
(17:35):
Are you just looking cash flow?
Like what is the lens that you use?
Hmm, I think location.
So for us, like every home that we own, wewant to own forever.
And that's, that's our goal.
And so location is like the number onething that we look at.
And so we're currently in North Tacoma,which is where we hope to stay.
(17:58):
We love North Tacoma.
There's also just great appreciation thathappens there, whether or not you bought.
a beat up home or a nicer home, this justhas great, it's highly sought after and I
don't see that changing anytime soonbecause pretty much all other parts of
Tacoma are up and coming in lots ofdifferent ways, but North Tacoma is
(18:18):
established, it's there.
And so because of that, it's going to behighly sought after for the foreseeable
future.
And then people don't wanna leave there.
I mean, inventory is an issue nationwide,especially in North Tacoma.
And so...
That is definitely one of the things, butI will say we were under contract for a,
it was a house with a detached ADU in theback.
(18:40):
And we love that because it had separateyards and it was nice.
We were in the mindset of doing a duplexwith shared walls.
So when we saw that opportunity, it wasturnkey also, which my husband really
wanted.
I did not, but he already wasn't evenloving the idea of a duplex.
Yeah.
we did it, we went under contract for afew reasons.
It didn't work out.
We fell out and we're obviouslyheartbroken.
(19:03):
But then this North Tacoma beat up theugliest duplex on that street popped up.
And immediately we wrote an offer.
We went in.
It was mostly just cosmetic issues, whichis all we could have handled.
I don't think we could have handled.
Yeah.
It.
To me, smells are something I don't thinkI could handle at all.
(19:27):
If it smells really bad, I'm going to havea hard time getting past that.
And I'm going to worry about it alwaysbeing there too.
But there were lots of cosmetic issues andthe tenants before also had a dog that
chewed through doors and things like that.
And so that's why we went with this one.
Location, cosmetic issues, even ourapartment.
(19:49):
that we're living in, we've barelytouched.
We've just left it as is because I don'tcare.
He doesn't care.
And when we run it out, we're going to getit all finished.
So I'm like, why paint and do things nowwhen we're just going to do it in a year
or two?
I don't, I grew up with a single dad.
We didn't decorate at all.
Whenever he wanted to hang something, he'duse scotch tape, put it on the wall.
(20:12):
And that was our artwork.
And I, so I'm very much still kind of likethat.
Just don't care.
yeah.
yeah, so far our next one, I'm hoping to,either way we're gonna be having, I hate
even saying this word, but it's, you know,the right word, passive income.
I don't like to say passive income, it'snever passive, right?
(20:32):
We're doing the work.
But either way, I'm gonna be having moremoney come in than our mortgage when we
run out our unit, even if we run it out asis, and which we don't plan to do, we plan
on updating it, getting even more.
So really the next one, it's just gonna belocation.
I'd love though, ideally to find afourplex where we're paying little to
nothing towards the mortgage and the otherunits are covering that.
(20:55):
So for me, it's more the numbers.
That's what I'm looking for.
Numbers and location.
Since we're house hackers and we're owneroccupying, the numbers aren't always
great.
The next one we're going to do 5 % downversus three and a half.
And so there's PMI and things like thatthat we deal with, but that just means
that the location has to be there.
So that way we're getting top market rent.
(21:16):
That's right.
also love when I can find multi -familieswith vacant units so I can set the rent
and there's not already a tenant built inpaying way below market value.
And so, yeah.
something to look for.
And I love that because, you know, I thinkfor, for any investor who's listening to
this podcast, I think having thatconversation with your partners or even
(21:39):
with yourself on what are, what are thethings that I'm going to say?
These are what I look for for you.
Location is critical for you.
You know, Tacoma, you know that.
And, and that is something in your hatthat you have that others might not see,
right?
It's looking past the,
Well, that property is run down or thatproperty might not do this, that or the
(21:59):
other thing where you're seeing.
Yeah.
But what you're not seeing is how greatthe location is.
The rest of that can be fixed.
Right.
And the second part of that is, you know,every time as investors, it's always about
how much is it cash flowing?
Right.
I don't think about passive income.
I think about in cashflow, like I'm withyou.
I don't ever use the term, you know,passive income.
(22:20):
It's how much is it cash flowing?
And my wife and I, you know, when we gotstarted, we set a goal for ourselves that
one of our criteria was when we run ournumbers, we want, we want units to
cashflow $200.
If our unit is cash flowing $200, that's agreat unit for us.
Now the cool thing is, and you know thisas well, we buy those properties on day
(22:44):
one.
I mean, day one being we fix them up, weget a renter in it.
Hardly ever have we been under that $200.
most of the time we're blowing out of thewater.
Like we're already cash flowing three,four, $500 above what we wanted.
But our goal is always when we run ournumbers, it's can we cash flow this thing
for $200?
And the cool part of that is, is that's$200 on day one when you rent it.
(23:08):
But every year, rent goes up by 50 bucksor a hundred bucks, right?
Or rent goes up by 75 bucks or whatever ithappens to be.
So it's $200 on day one, but in year five,
you're now at $400 a door.
And by year eight, you're now cash flowing$700 per door.
And that's just if we just have normal,you know, normal growth through rental
(23:30):
income.
We've been lucky enough that in the lastcouple of years, I mean, especially coming
out of the pandemic and through thepandemic, I mean, the cost of rents just
skyrocketed on us.
I mean, we had, and they're starting tocome back.
Like we've had to rent a couple of ourrentals now.
We've had to pull back, you know, $100 and$200 a month on these rentals.
But we have to remind ourselves, yeah, butwe've almost, we almost doubled it in the
(23:53):
first five years because of where we were.
So pulling back $200, it hurts, but we'restill way far ahead of where we ever
expected to be at this point becausehouses are still hard to come by.
And are you buying your houses in cash orare you financing them?
We financed them.
(24:14):
So I have 10, I have, this is one of ourissues right now is I've used all 10 of my
loans.
And I think one of the little hacks that alot of people don't think about is you
don't have to have both you and yourspouse on the mortgage.
One of you can carry the mortgage, butboth of you, because we live in a
(24:36):
community, a community state, communityproperty state, both of you are on title.
but the mortgage can only be in one ofyour names.
And because of my job, my job inconsulting, educational consultant, I had
income, we were able to qualify for loanswhere I just using my income would qualify
(24:57):
as for these loans.
And so we've been able to have 10 loans inmy name.
That includes, we have a HELOC out on ourhouse and our primary house.
So I've got eight investment mortgages.
a HELOC and my primary are my 10 loans.
So we are in this process now oftransitioning to making on paper, because
(25:20):
it's all on paper, making on paper thatall the rental income is my wife's income
so that she can qualify for her 10 loans.
And so that's how we're doing it.
So theoretically, we could have 20 loansout.
between the two of us on 20 differentproperties.
(25:42):
We do have one property as a commercialloan because we needed to.
I was already out of loans at the time.
And so we got a commercial loan on aduplex, found a bank that would give us a
commercial loan on a duplex.
And that's working okay.
But yeah, for us, for that, that's workedout.
Most of those we've had to put down 20%.
Sorry, go ahead.
(26:04):
The other thing to consider then would berefinancing when interest rates drop.
I don't know where, if you've bought a lotin the past few years, you're probably
good.
But for us, like we're at a 5 .75.
And so rents will increase, which weactually decided not to raise this year,
just because they're already at top marketvalue.
And even a year later, it's still topmarket value.
(26:25):
So we feel good with that.
But once when we can refinance, they'll bepaying the same, if not more.
right.
we'll be paying less towards our mortgage.
And so that is an exciting feeling, eventhough we're not close to there yet, one
day when we are, right?
Because you always, you buy the house withthe current interest rates, knowing that
you're comfortable with the currentinterest rates.
And I always tell my clients that I wantyou to be in the mindset that you'll never
(26:49):
get to refinance.
So you're comfortable, we're not gonna buythis house and you're gonna be desperate
for interest rates to drop.
Yep.
happy surprise.
We're gonna be excited.
It's gonna be a good phone call to getlike, hey, it's time to refinance.
Till then though, you gotta be comfortablewith it.
And so.
And we've, we played that on this, thispiece of property we just bought out at
(27:11):
Pacific beach is out at, if anybody knowsout at Seabrook Pacific beach, Julia
posted it on our Instagram, the story ofour, our dream property.
We were just able to purchase it.
But part of the reason why we were able topurchase it is all of these second homes
in Seabrook and property out there,there's a ton of supply all of a sudden.
(27:32):
And part of it is people listening to thenews and market.
situations, but because of that, theprices have started to drop dramatically
out there.
Now we know that as soon as interest ratesdrop, that's going to change.
Those prices are going to go right backup.
So we are willing to play the real estategame of saying we want, we found our dream
(27:54):
property.
We're going to be paying 7 .2 % intereston this dream property, but we know that's
the highest to your point.
That's the highest we'll ever pay.
Yep.
and all the signs are pointing to, we wantthis thing to be around five, five and a
half percent.
As soon as it drops down to five or fiveand a half percent, that's a bonus in your
(28:15):
words.
I love that.
It's a bonus.
And we still have our dream property thatwe paid less for than somebody else is
going to pay for at five and five and ahalf percent.
So this is actually, and I love this andyou as a realtor, I'm sure I'm saying this
to, to buyers all the time.
It's actually a really good time to buy.
Yes.
your point, make those numbers work now,because you're not gonna be able to afford
(28:38):
that house when it's back down to 5 .5%,because that house is probably gonna go up
another 3%, and now it's out of reach,right?
exactly.
Yeah.
I mean, if you are waiting for the rightcircumstances, I mean, welcome to the
club.
Aren't we all for everything?
I mean, come on.
perfect?
I just needed to all be perfect.
(28:59):
It's not going to be you make it happen.
Yeah.
interest rates.
We want low prices.
We want more inventory.
But what I really want is information onhow to make today work for me right now.
I'm not going to wait on the future andwait on potential circumstances.
I'm going to create the circumstances forme.
(29:20):
I think interest rates were over 6 % whenwe got 5 .75.
We got the seller to buy down our rate.
He paid for that.
that's so great.
of our purchase price and gave us the ratethat worked for us.
And so there are options out there andthere's ways to make it work.
And as you said, like this is your dreamhome.
(29:41):
You got to deal with the purchase pricebecause you're not getting a deal with the
interest rate, which a lot of people areseeing right now.
Sellers are very well aware that interestrates are high, so they are doing more to
accommodate you.
And if you need accommodations like thatis.
It's just a game plan that needs to becreated.
I have some buyers that are buying in cashand don't need any accommodations so we
(30:03):
can look at more competitive areas.
And then I have others who need closingcosts paid for, they need a rate buy down.
And so we just create that custom gameplan on how to get you into that home and
get you the deal you need today ratherthan waiting.
So.
even, you know, with this property, webought this property for over $200 ,000
(30:23):
less than listing and it appraised for $25,000 more than what we paid.
But it's because of the situation we're inand this seller has been sitting on this
piece of property for a year.
And because he's been sitting on it for ayear, more inventory has come online.
The plots of land around them are sellingfor less and less and less, making his
(30:47):
land less and less and less.
Like the land hasn't changed.
The view of the ocean hasn't changed.
Just the market values have changed.
And so we mean, when we looked at thisproperty, we couldn't afford it at the
price that he was asking for it.
But you start looking at what's happeningand you understand how to play these
games.
And all of a sudden, you know, we went inand we're just like, if we can get this
(31:08):
for anywhere close to this price, we'll bein.
know and we were you know so yeah it'sbuilt in equity yeah
you're getting built in equity to a homeand appraiser is telling you, you got this
for a steal, then it's a great time tobuy.
There's always opportunity.
And especially to, you're right, likeinventory is still low, for sure
(31:32):
everywhere, most places, right?
But people are getting fearful and theyare selling their homes and they're
walking away from them, which is justgreat opportunity for buyers out there
that are ready to make it work.
And so it's just get your foot in the doorbecause here you are by about to build
your dream home on your dream piece ofland that you already got with built in
(31:54):
equity.
And it's from buying a literally shittycondo in Seattle that you had to put a ton
of elbow grease in and get it where youwanted it to.
And now that leverage has got you so muchcloser to your main goal, right?
Which is your forever home.
Yeah.
I mean, we, I mean, yeah, it's ourretirement home.
(32:15):
I think the home we're in right now isprobably our forever home, but even the
home we're in right now, I mean, this, theone up here on this one we have on Queen
Anne, we, it was 2016.
We were looking to move out of the condo.
So we bought the condo in 2009.
We were looking to move out of the condoand move into our first time ever into a,
you know, a single family home for us.
We lived in apartments and condos.
(32:36):
I mean, we're.
whatever time, however old we are at thispoint, 40 or something like that, about
40, and never lived in a single familyhome before.
And we were looking at it in 2016, and youmight remember the market in 2016 was just
on fire, especially up here in Seattle.
And we had this conversation of we have tojump now if we ever are going to be able
(32:57):
to afford a single family home in theSeattle area.
If we don't jump fast, the market willoutpace what we can make.
And we could see that, right?
We know what our income is.
We can see the market blowing up off theother end.
And we just knew there was no way we couldchase the prices that were happening here
in the greater Seattle area.
So we decided we were going to jump.
(33:18):
Now we missed out on a coupleopportunities.
Like one house we put an offering on endedup going for over $300 ,000 in cash.
This is Seattle in 2016.
It was just a nightmare.
And we found the house that we're in now.
And again, it was...
I mean, you could live in it, which is theonly house we've ever bought that you
(33:38):
could move in and live in it, but it wasstill in pretty rough shape.
But I mean, it didn't have holes in theceiling.
There wasn't a fire in it.
I mean, I've got so many stories ofeverything else we bought, you know,
squatters already living in it like everyother home we bought.
But the problem was is on the backside,because we live up on Queen Han, it's
about a 15 foot drop down to the alleyway.
And the previous owners had decided toempty their hot tub into the hundred year
(34:04):
old retaining wall.
And so the retaining wall had given out.
And most buyers, especially up here onQueen Anne, just want turnkey.
And so the only way we could afford thishouse was because nobody was willing to do
the work.
And this is where as real estateinvestors, if you're willing to do the
work, there are opportunities here foryou.
(34:25):
So we put an offer in and then we went outand we had three companies give us bids to
rebuild this back wall.
it was going to cost around $80 ,000.
So then we got an $80 ,000 reduction onthe price of the house.
And all of that allowed us to actually buythe home.
Right?
So we bought this house for just about, Idon't know, I was right around a million
(34:45):
dollars over the years.
Now we've done during COVID, we did a fullthree floor renovation.
So it is brand spanking new.
And now we're on the other side of it.
We almost have a million dollars in equityin this house.
Right?
It's just, but the,
The opportunity was there.
Now, here's the crazy part.
You talk about taking a jump.
We bought this house and we, like, nobodyshould have sold us this house.
(35:08):
We bought this house and on the day ofclosing, it took every, because we did 20
% down commercial financing, but we had 57cents left in our bank account when we
closed.
And we've done that twice now where we'vebought properties and we're down to like
pennies in the bank account.
But if you know it's there, if you knowhow to run the numbers, if you can see the
(35:30):
equity out the other end, it's worthtaking those risks, right?
And they're calculated risks.
that.
Yeah.
There's a lot of stigma against like beinghouse poor, right?
Like people, I hear that a lot.
Like I don't want to be house poor.
And I get it.
I don't ever argue with people when theysay that, especially potential clients,
right?
(35:50):
But I do say like, I'm house poor.
Like we went from renting a thousanddollars a month for a three bed, one bath,
to, you know, even though we just pay halfour less than half of our mortgage, it's
still over two grand.
We doubled our biggest in
our biggest expense and it's been hard.
It has been, it's taken everything we'vegot.
We both have worked really hard to makemore money because we have to and it
(36:13):
happened fast too.
It was the other mortgage that we wereunder contract for was going to be better.
And then when that fell apart and we hadto go for this one, I knew we just had to
take the leap.
And so right now there are moments wherewe feel, oof, like, you know, this, this
is a lot.
Like we made a huge jump.
right, because that's the word you keptusing and it's a fact like it's a jump.
(36:35):
And, but I just can't shake the feelingthat the future version of us are going to
be so grateful that we ate top ramen alittle more and, you know, worked a little
couple extra side jobs got the overtimedone like we did what we needed to do now
so that we can buy the dream propertylater so that we can have more of that
(36:56):
comfort but.
Yeah, so I love that you shared thatbecause, you know, it goes back to how we
started this episode with their peoplelove to act like this is sexy and
glamorous and it came to me sure.
Selling sunset is a show.
It's a thing, but it's not always andyou're not feeling you're not behind.
(37:16):
You're not a loser.
If it doesn't feel sexy and glamorous allthe time, I beg to differ that you are
normal and you are on track.
If it feels.
ugly and rough sometimes like it.
It's a sacrifice.
It's it's a push.
It's hard to be in a mindset of let's belet's eat top ramen every day this week.
(37:37):
And let's say no to all the fun thingsthat our friends are doing.
And let's you know, put our money intothis investment that's going to be long
term success and not short term well,which I think short term wealth is also
all over social media.
There's I
true.
every video I see it's like I posted thisone video 24 hours later, I'm viral and
(38:01):
making this money and like that'll neverbe on our podcast.
That's not what we're here to.
We won't give you short success.
Yeah.
Yeah.
Yeah.
And I, and I say, I say this too, and I'mdoing, you know, things that, real estate
get togethers is it's really a wave andyou, you learn, you learn over time where
you are in the wave.
And for my wife and I, you know, we hadjust come out of the wave.
(38:24):
This is fantastic.
We weren't looking for this really lookingfor a piece, our dream property yet.
We, this was supposed to be five yearsdown the road.
And just, you know, this last yearhappened to us and things happened in our
lives.
We were just like, nope, it's time tostart looking for this.
But we had just come out of, we were,well, we had just come out of, we, for
seven years, we didn't travel with ourfriends.
As a couple who've been to over 55countries, for us not to travel for seven
(38:50):
years, people don't, like, this is, it'slike people not going to Starbucks for
seven years, right?
If that's your thing.
Like for us.
And we didn't and our friends were justlike, you people, you don't do anything
anymore.
We're like, no, but that's not right now.
That's not our focus.
And we had just come out of that to wherewe started traveling again.
We're starting to travel the world and dothe things that we love.
And we've just put ourselves by buyingthis property and wanting to build our
(39:13):
dream home, put ourselves back into thatdip.
But we're okay with that to your point.
We'll eat a little more top ramen.
We'll take few, we'll take less trips.
We'll do less things with friends becauseonce we get through the dip,
that next rise is even better than thelast rise, right?
But you go through these cycles.
Nothing ever constantly goes up orconstantly goes down, but you have to
(39:34):
understand where you are, and on the downslopes, you gotta grind it out.
You grind it out, because you know thatthe bottom's coming and you're gonna get
back up, right?
You're gonna eat a little more top ramen,you're not gonna go hang out with your
friends, you gotta do what you gotta do tomake it through.
But when you make it through, it's betterthan when it was when you went in, right?
And that's the grind, and I find so manypeople give up in the grind.
(39:55):
Yes.
People give up in the grind.
It's the breaking point and it's, youknow, I feel like we're kind of there
right now where we said no to a wedding,right?
And we, we eloped instead.
We're doing a little backyard celebration.
So my parents are included, but that was afinancial choice more than anything, even
though I'm not the big wedding.
I don't have the Pinterest boards and thethings that a lot of people do, which is
(40:17):
great.
It just wasn't my thing.
Either way, it was my husband's.
He wanted a big wedding, but I said, no,we're going to get a house.
We're going to, we're not going to co-mingle those.
expenses, those savings, right?
Cause everyone says that they say, well wewon't combine them.
We can do both and you don't, you do itall on the wedding.
And so we chose to do it all on the house.
(40:38):
And I've also, I've never had a passport.
I've never left the country yet, which Iwant to so bad, but it's just, this is the
season of saying no to a lot of thosethings.
This is the season of working, of gettingthose houses and just building my
portfolio.
Like my goal is to...
have a strong portfolio where when I amtraveling, it is without the stress of how
(41:01):
am I gonna pay for this when I get back orpay off this credit card, you know, and
things like that and teach their own forsure.
I don't think there's, I don't think I'mright in my process.
I think that it's just my process.
And I think that I...
I watched my parents work really hard whenI was younger, like throughout my
childhood and my life.
They worked multiple jobs every day of theweek, constantly at Disney World.
(41:22):
My mom would be literally working.
She'd bring her laptop into Disney Worldand we'd sit at the Starbucks and she
would get stuff done and they worked sohard.
And I just hope by that stage for me, I'mnot having to do it that hard.
It's it'll look different, right?
It'll still be hard work, but just not.
So I'm trying to just dedicate my 20s and30s to just.
(41:44):
grinding it out, getting it done.
a good thing to do.
You know, my wife and I didn't take ahoneymoon.
You know, that was me and but we justcelebrated our 25th wedding anniversary
and we got to spend 10 days in theMaldives.
Now, if you tell me, you know, if you'dhave told me at 22, you're not going to
take a honeymoon now.
But in 25 years, you will have builtenough wealth together that you're going
(42:04):
to take 10 days in the Maldives.
I would have given I didn't know that atthe time that that's the outcome was going
to be.
But to your point, we made a consciousdecision to say we've got other priorities
right now.
on building our own wealth, even when wegot married, you know, at 22, that these
are our priorities.
We can forfeit going on a honeymoonbecause we couldn't afford 10 days in the
(42:25):
mall.
We didn't even know the Maldives was acountry when we were 22, right?
And we just spent 10 days on an overwaterbungalow in one of the most beautiful
places in the world, right?
So, but this is the thing.
And I think, you know, your story is thatyou're at the beginning stages of that,
right?
You forfeit the big wedding, you and,
at some point you're going to have someincredible things where you're going to be
(42:46):
like, my gosh, we gave that up because thething that we were able to do is
exponentially way better than whateverthat one day at $10 ,000 meant for you.
You're still married.
You still love your husband.
Everything is still the same.
It just wasn't big massive over the topand everybody makes those sacrifices.
And I think if anybody take, if you takeanything away from this podcast, it's that
(43:07):
there are multiple different ways to dothis.
Don't be, don't get yourself.
so focused into everybody else doingeverything on social media.
You've got to find what's the right pathfor you, right?
You've got to find what's the right pathfor you.
Reach out to people, go to coachingsessions, find a mentor, listen to
podcasts like this.
(43:28):
And you know, if this is the first time ofyou listening to a podcast, this is Julia
and I, this is like, we're not glamorizingthis.
Like you only get to work one or two hoursa week.
Like it's a grind.
Like life is a grind and real estate cansupport you.
but it's gonna be a grind as well.
And just understand that going forward.
But find your path.
There's a lot of path.
There's so many ways to do this, to buildlong -term wealth through real estate, but
(43:53):
it's not gonna be easy.
Absolutely, and I will say to just trustthe process trust your process if you're
feeling behind and All you have in youright now is to just listen to this
podcast listen to real estate investingpodcast Then that's enough you are
gathering information which is gonna serveyou in the future And I think that you
(44:15):
know like the newsletter is seeing 225doors.
I thought man.
I'm a loser I'm not doing enough, but weare we are exactly where we're meant to be
right now.
It's so cheesy
but it's so true and just gatheringinformation is more than a lot of people
are doing.
A lot of people have succumbed to the ideaof I'm a renter, I'll be a renter forever.
(44:35):
It's just the market sucks and there's noopportunities and I'm gonna wait for a
crash.
If you're already outside of that and youalready just wanna learn about what is
possible, you're already ahead of the gameand you're gonna get there and yeah, we're
proud of you.
I love that.
What a great way to end this episode.
Julia, thanks for taking time.
We need to do more of these where you andI just talk about something like a
(44:57):
newsletter that hit our inbox today andthe way that we reacted to it and our
different mindsets.
So it's great.
But hope everybody enjoyed this.
Julie and I just talking about, I don'tknow, random stuff.
If you like this, if you have something,if you have something you want to share
with us, of course, you can always reachout to us.
Info at wsreip .com.
(45:17):
or you can fill out the contact form overthere on our website, wsreip .com.
Julia, thanks so much.
It was great having a conversation withyou today.
Thank you, Jo.
All right, welcome back to the Washingtonstate real estate investing podcast.
So excited today.
It's just Julie and I having someconversations around investment,
investment strategies, different ways youcan get started.
And maybe even as we've kind of talkedhere before we got started, how to not
feel bad about yourself.
(00:22):
cause it is, it's, it's very easy.
And Julia, we were talking before we gotstarted.
It's very easy to see things on tick tockor see things on Instagram or.
Get a newsletter where people are sayingI'm making this much money.
I'm making this much money and we start toTake that on as our own of I'm not good
enough or where I'm at isn't good enoughand we start to internalize that and
(00:45):
that's always one of the biggest issueswith I think our social media diets is
Trying to remember that people only postthe great stuff You know and Just as we
get into this episode today
I just like thinking about that.
It's some of the work I actually do withschool districts and my other job is
(01:06):
talking to students about this, right?
It's just like, you have to understandthat nobody ever posts the bad stuff
online or very rarely.
It's always the picture perfect.
Everything is going so well for me andeverything that I'm doing that we don't
always get to see the behind the scenesstruggle of what it took to get there or
what is the real things that are going on.
(01:28):
Yeah, no, that's a great point.
I also just think it's really sexy andglamorous to put out there.
I work one to two hours a week and I makethis much money and look at my home and
look at all these things.
Look at how many doors I have.
And, you know, that newsletter that weboth received, I didn't even dissect it
(01:48):
the way you did.
I just let it make me feel bad immediatelythinking, I work more than that and I
don't make enough and it can feel.
defeating and I know that a lot of theinvestors that I follow to real estate
moguls, right, are very, they like topreach that they barely work and they make
a lot of money.
And I know I work more than one to twohours a week.
(02:11):
You know, sometimes I feel like I work 50to 60 hours a week and it's, it's tough.
And of course the goal is to one day be inmore of a financial freedom place where
we're not working so hard, but to getthere.
it's, you know, boots on the ground, wegotta go.
it takes effort.
It takes time, you know, and it is, and,and, you know, we all need mentors.
(02:33):
We all need something to strive for.
And we set goals for ourselves of where wewant to be at certain times.
And maybe we'll get into that today of howmy wife and I kind of set mini goals to
get to where we are today.
but understand that they're goals, right?
And, and things are going to happen inlife.
And it just is, you know, my wife and Ijust had, our anniversary and during our
anniversary, we always sit down and bejust like last year when we planned out
(02:56):
the next year,
We didn't even end up close to where wethought we were going to be because this
thing called life happens to you.
And some things turned out better.
Some things turned out worse.
And that's just living life, right?
And that's the excitement of living lifeand where you're at.
but we did get this letter today and itwas very interesting cause Julie and I
were talking before we both got this samenewsletter today.
(03:17):
And, in the newsletter, the person talksabout that they are, they own 225 cash
flowing units and they cash flow.
roughly $13 ,000 a month.
And so Julie and I were breaking thatdown.
And it comes out that there are cashflowing about $58 per door, which doesn't
sound like a whole lot.
I mean, yes, you have 225 doors, youprobably have very little money in or I
(03:42):
don't know how much money is actuallyinvested in these.
We don't know they don't give us that wedon't know how much money is invested in
there.
But we're looking at $58 per door.
And it's just one of those things you haveto start when you see numbers.
You have to go into the numbers and say,well, really is that good?
And for some people, they're like, that'sgreat.
For my wife and I, that's, that's notgood.
My wife and I have 18 doors and wecashflow on average, 650 bucks a door.
(04:08):
So even though I don't have 225 doors, I'mcash flowing more than this person is
every single month because we've, we'vetaken a different route in real estate
investing.
And I think that's the cool thing aboutreal estate.
Yeah.
Yeah, you want to lay your own floors.
You want to do your tile.
You want to be involved.
And you do delegate because we needsanity, right?
(04:31):
And you make sure that you have, you know,you have a property manager and things
like that.
But you know, this other person, I'dassume they hire everybody for everything,
which is great.
But because of that, they need morevolume.
And I definitely had the shiny Audra.
object syndrome where I saw those numbersand I thought, man, I don't, I own two
(04:54):
doors.
I'm lame in comparison to his 225 doors.
And you are the one who actually dissectedthat, looked at the math and it's like,
wow, like I actually, I don't have aninterest in owning that many doors because
that's not my goal.
Like I also like to be hands -on.
I like to be involved and we do our ownproperty managements.
We're only at two doors one day.
(05:14):
That's definitely something I hope todelegate out, but it's just,
It's just, we all have to make thosechoices.
And so it's important not to getfrustrated or feel like you're not doing
enough just based on the shiny numbers andto really look at it.
So I'm glad you brought that up.
yeah.
And I think it's always something to belooking for.
(05:36):
you know, my wife and I, we've never hada, a door number when we started
investing, we never said we want to reachthis many doors.
We've always set these goals for ourselvesto get to specific places and then however
many doors that takes.
And the reason why I think for us, thatapproach has worked.
And again, there's a million differentways to do it.
(05:57):
But for my wife and I is because.
Some doors are, you know, some doors arecash flowing more than others.
We have a single family that cash flows $2,000 a month.
And we've got a fourplex that only cashes,you know, like, like $400 per door per
month, but it's a fourplex, right?
And so it's not so many how many doors,we've got a number that we're looking for.
(06:22):
And if that, if we can do that number with20 doors, fantastic.
If we can do that number with 35 doors,that's what...
that's how many doors it's going to take.
And so I think, you know, it's great thatyou have 225 doors and we know real estate
investors have way more than that and goodon them.
But I have no need for the rest of my lifeto take care of 200 doors and just knowing
(06:45):
how much paperwork is in the 18 doors wehave, I can't imagine just that alone
would be enough to be just like, no, I'mnot.
I'm not gonna do this.
And to your point, I think, Nixnick, you,you like doing the hands -on stuff around,
you know, you like the hands -on propertymanagement, and that's great, you know?
I mean, you love that part.
(07:06):
My wife loves the design aspect.
And so for us, the hands -on is the tileand the flooring and being involved in the
design and construction.
When it comes to the day -to -day propertymanagement, that's not our jam, right?
And I think one of the things that I talkabout when I talk about with...
this with real estate investors is there'skind of four things when you start your
(07:28):
real estate company, because that's reallywhat it is.
There's kind of four quadrants that youwant to think about.
And your goal is to figure out which oneof those quadrants is your passion, and
that's the one you hang on to the most.
And which one do you hate doing?
And the one you hate doing is the firstone you hire out, whatever that looks
like.
(07:49):
Because there's going to be things thatyou're not going to like to do.
but you can do them, right?
Like the accounting, I don't like to dothe accounting part of our business, but I
can do it.
I know how to run an Excel sheet.
I've got Stessa that supports us behindthe scenes and I'll take care of that.
And I work with our CPA to do the taxes.
It does not fill my cup in any way, but Ican do that.
(08:10):
My wife and I hate going out and findingproperties as far as like knocking on
doors, finding stuff off market.
That's just too much work for us.
It's not that we can't do it.
It's just like, so.
That's the first thing we've hired out.
And then the other three bowls we dointernally.
Yeah.
(08:32):
Yeah, it'll be interesting to see how Ikind of shape the way what I decide to do
hands on and what I don't becauseobviously for my first property, it fell
out of my hands on what I got to choose.
We didn't have the money really to doproperty management.
It made no sense.
We're living in the same home as ourtenants.
Why not take that process ourselves,right?
And then we hired contractors to do a lotof the work.
(08:54):
And I do wish we had more time to do itourselves because we're
I think our contractors did a really greatjob, but I would have done things
differently.
And so I wish I would have been moreinvolved in that.
And so I'm hoping with, we'll see whatlife allows, right?
Like you said, life's applied for you, butI'm hoping to do our own flooring for this
(09:14):
one.
And I'd love to learn how to do tile too.
So, and redo the shower.
So that's my goal.
I'm trying to get more handy, cause Ithink that it's just fun.
It feels good.
It's rewarding to get that done yourself.
I get intimidated though by not knowing,right?
And so my husband has a YouTube certifiedpatch and he does so much stuff just from
(09:38):
YouTube videos and I needed to startwatching more and figuring it out.
And so I'm hoping with our unit, we havemore time and I can like slowly do the
floors myself and things like that.
We ripped up, we did a lot of demo work,which was fun.
And then you get to decide what is it youreally like.
Like I'll never forget when one of ourfirst flips and we were trying to do a
(09:58):
lot, like we were trying to save as muchmoney.
We were, you know, we were still at acontractor doing the contracting stuff
because you have permits and you have tohave a contractor and plumbers and do all
that.
but I remember we were going to savemoney.
And like my wife talks about this all thetime.
So my brother -in -law and I, because wewere in partnership with my brother -in
-law and sister -in -law on this flip, andso we decided we were going to ourselves
(10:21):
replace all the insulation underneath thehouse.
And so we had to put on, you know, thefull hazmat suits and it was middle of
summer.
It was like 90 degrees outside and we'reunderneath his house ripping out all of
the old insulation.
It was in like 1908 house or something.
And we are both soaking wet.
We are itchy from insulation.
And it was like the most miserableexperience I had ever had to the point
(10:45):
where we got done that day.
And I looked at my wife.
I was like, no way.
This is this is not filling my bucket.
I love working on homes.
This isn't it.
So we called it.
We called an insulation place and it wassomething like eighteen hundred dollars.
And I was like, for eighteen hundredbucks, they can do it.
I mean, but but you you have to almost gothrough those experiences to say like, you
(11:07):
know what?
I don't mind.
piling or I don't mind laying the floors,right?
And, or I don't mind doing this.
I don't mind painting like some peoplelove the painting.
Some people love painting trim.
I mean, whatever it is, you can say Idon't mind doing that part.
But there's other parts.
Yeah.
But there's there'll be other parts whereyou're just like, I hate doing that.
And if you hate doing it, then it's worthpaying somebody else to do.
(11:29):
Yeah, yeah, it's true, but you're right.
You gotta try it out yourself first andwhat it's worth and if you really can get
it done.
I try, I will try painting again.
I will.
I think I know what I did wrong firsttime.
I definitely just underestimated it.
So moving forward, but I'll give it onemore go because not a clue.
(11:50):
But Jeff, I'd love to learn about how yougot started, how you decided to go down
this path.
Yeah, I think, you know, we, we didn'treally decide to go down this path, but
much like everybody, I think we ended upin a situation where we were living
(12:12):
overseas at the time and we were lookingto start transitioning back to the U S
and, we were looking for a place to live,a place to buy.
And we were looking at a condo in downtownSeattle at the time.
And my wife and I had to have this, youknow, a little heart to heart.
I of course wanted not knowing what I knownow.
I wanted turnkey.
(12:32):
I didn't want to have to do any of it.
Not that I can't.
I lived on a farm.
I know how to do a bunch of the work.
but I didn't want to, I just wanted aturnkey place that we could move into.
We were still going to be at least twomore years overseas before we came back.
I didn't want to have to come home everywinter break or come home every summer
break.
Cause we were teachers, to work on theproperty.
(12:53):
I just wanted something that I could.
come home on vacation and relax until.
And my wife was the complete opposite.
She wanted something that she could fixup.
She doesn't like if it's already fixed up,whoever did it, didn't do it her way,
right?
There's always something she wants tochange.
She's just like, I don't like the kitchen.
(13:13):
I don't like the paint.
I don't like, there's always somethingthat she needs to make it hers.
So we had to have these conversations justgetting started around, do we wanna do?
you know, move in ready of which she wouldnever be happy because there's always
something she'd want to do or you'rebuying something and it's a completely
great black backsplash, but it's not abacksplash I love, but it's functional.
(13:39):
And so you're taking out something that'sfunctional just because you don't like the
aesthetic of it.
And that also bothers us because we're notwasteful people.
And so we ended up on the, on her side, aswe usually do of buying these fixer upper
properties.
because if you buy something that'salready trash, you can only make it better
and you get to make it yours.
(14:00):
And you don't feel bad taking out the oldbacksplash because it's probably broken
into million pieces and, and you get to dowhatever you want, right?
Or whatever the cutesiness of it is thatyou want.
So we ended up buying a condo that was ashort sell situation in 2009.
Now 2009 happens to be almost the bottomof the real estate crash.
(14:23):
We have no clue, we are not payingattention.
We live in Thailand.
We have no clue about any of this stuffgoing on, because our apartment in
Thailand is being paid for by our school.
We're just living the great life of livingoverseas.
And we end up buying this short cellapartment that they had tried, horrible
situation, but basically they had a littledog in there.
(14:44):
The dog had peed and pooped everywhere.
They'd shut the water off on the unit.
And so the people in the unit had used thetoilets until they overflowed.
And this is a condo building in downtownSeattle, which also helped us because we
knew, I mean, the condo building itselfwas gorgeous and they had this horrible
tenant that they couldn't get out.
(15:05):
I mean, the place was so bad that therewas a common floor on the second floor, a
common area on like a second floor for thecondo owners.
And that's where the owners of this unithung out because this...
Their unit was so gross by this time.
So it took us, it took us a while to getit under contract with short sales and us
living overseas added a whole nothernightmare.
I mean, why we ever bought a home againafter the craziness we had to go through,
(15:27):
which I won't get into it had to do withlike having to go to an embassy in
Brussels at the last moment.
It was just nuts, to, to get it closed,but we ended up buying this place.
and then we ended up rehabbing it.
And of course in 2012, the market takesoff again.
And next thing we know, we're sitting on aton of equity.
(15:49):
And that's when we first kind ofunderstood how this real estate thing
works.
It's not just, not only did we buysomething and then we were able to
instantly improve it, like forceappreciation by updating it.
We were also then getting the appreciationof what happened here in the market on top
of that.
And so we kind of had this double whammy.
(16:09):
And it was that force appreciation piecethat really stuck out to us.
And that's what started our adventure intothis.
So then we started saying, we startedlistening to podcasts, we started
educating ourselves and this idea of beingable to force appreciation led us into
flips.
So we would flip a property where we couldbuy something that needed a bunch of
renovation.
(16:29):
We'd force that appreciation and then beable to sell it for a profit out the other
end.
And so it was really that like not evenknowing what we were doing.
understanding that we really liked thisidea of being able to do it ourselves and
force that appreciation.
Not everybody wants to do that, but forus, that is down to the property we're
(16:52):
working on right now had a fire in it in2018 and nobody has wanted to buy it
because it's so much work.
And my wife and I have tried to buy ittwice to get to an agreement on the price
that we feel like we can do with it whatwe want.
But it's going to be a lot of work.
Like we're a year in and we, I mean, wemowed the grass.
That's pretty much all we've done in ayear because we have to do permitting and
(17:13):
there was a fire.
So we have to go through all thismitigation stuff.
but that's really been our, if I, if Ihave to boil it down, we look for forest
appreciation properties.
and that works for us.
Yeah, so that condo.
How did I get started?
Yeah, or what's yours?
Are you looking for forest appreciation?
(17:35):
Are you just looking cash flow?
Like what is the lens that you use?
Hmm, I think location.
So for us, like every home that we own, wewant to own forever.
And that's, that's our goal.
And so location is like the number onething that we look at.
And so we're currently in North Tacoma,which is where we hope to stay.
(17:58):
We love North Tacoma.
There's also just great appreciation thathappens there, whether or not you bought.
a beat up home or a nicer home, this justhas great, it's highly sought after and I
don't see that changing anytime soonbecause pretty much all other parts of
Tacoma are up and coming in lots ofdifferent ways, but North Tacoma is
(18:18):
established, it's there.
And so because of that, it's going to behighly sought after for the foreseeable
future.
And then people don't wanna leave there.
I mean, inventory is an issue nationwide,especially in North Tacoma.
And so...
That is definitely one of the things, butI will say we were under contract for a,
it was a house with a detached ADU in theback.
(18:40):
And we love that because it had separateyards and it was nice.
We were in the mindset of doing a duplexwith shared walls.
So when we saw that opportunity, it wasturnkey also, which my husband really
wanted.
I did not, but he already wasn't evenloving the idea of a duplex.
Yeah.
we did it, we went under contract for afew reasons.
It didn't work out.
We fell out and we're obviouslyheartbroken.
(19:03):
But then this North Tacoma beat up theugliest duplex on that street popped up.
And immediately we wrote an offer.
We went in.
It was mostly just cosmetic issues, whichis all we could have handled.
I don't think we could have handled.
Yeah.
It.
To me, smells are something I don't thinkI could handle at all.
(19:27):
If it smells really bad, I'm going to havea hard time getting past that.
And I'm going to worry about it alwaysbeing there too.
But there were lots of cosmetic issues andthe tenants before also had a dog that
chewed through doors and things like that.
And so that's why we went with this one.
Location, cosmetic issues, even ourapartment.
(19:49):
that we're living in, we've barelytouched.
We've just left it as is because I don'tcare.
He doesn't care.
And when we run it out, we're going to getit all finished.
So I'm like, why paint and do things nowwhen we're just going to do it in a year
or two?
I don't, I grew up with a single dad.
We didn't decorate at all.
Whenever he wanted to hang something, he'duse scotch tape, put it on the wall.
(20:12):
And that was our artwork.
And I, so I'm very much still kind of likethat.
Just don't care.
yeah.
yeah, so far our next one, I'm hoping to,either way we're gonna be having, I hate
even saying this word, but it's, you know,the right word, passive income.
I don't like to say passive income, it'snever passive, right?
(20:32):
We're doing the work.
But either way, I'm gonna be having moremoney come in than our mortgage when we
run out our unit, even if we run it out asis, and which we don't plan to do, we plan
on updating it, getting even more.
So really the next one, it's just gonna belocation.
I'd love though, ideally to find afourplex where we're paying little to
nothing towards the mortgage and the otherunits are covering that.
(20:55):
So for me, it's more the numbers.
That's what I'm looking for.
Numbers and location.
Since we're house hackers and we're owneroccupying, the numbers aren't always
great.
The next one we're going to do 5 % downversus three and a half.
And so there's PMI and things like thatthat we deal with, but that just means
that the location has to be there.
So that way we're getting top market rent.
(21:16):
That's right.
also love when I can find multi -familieswith vacant units so I can set the rent
and there's not already a tenant built inpaying way below market value.
And so, yeah.
something to look for.
And I love that because, you know, I thinkfor, for any investor who's listening to
this podcast, I think having thatconversation with your partners or even
(21:39):
with yourself on what are, what are thethings that I'm going to say?
These are what I look for for you.
Location is critical for you.
You know, Tacoma, you know that.
And, and that is something in your hatthat you have that others might not see,
right?
It's looking past the,
Well, that property is run down or thatproperty might not do this, that or the
(21:59):
other thing where you're seeing.
Yeah.
But what you're not seeing is how greatthe location is.
The rest of that can be fixed.
Right.
And the second part of that is, you know,every time as investors, it's always about
how much is it cash flowing?
Right.
I don't think about passive income.
I think about in cashflow, like I'm withyou.
I don't ever use the term, you know,passive income.
(22:20):
It's how much is it cash flowing?
And my wife and I, you know, when we gotstarted, we set a goal for ourselves that
one of our criteria was when we run ournumbers, we want, we want units to
cashflow $200.
If our unit is cash flowing $200, that's agreat unit for us.
Now the cool thing is, and you know thisas well, we buy those properties on day
(22:44):
one.
I mean, day one being we fix them up, weget a renter in it.
Hardly ever have we been under that $200.
most of the time we're blowing out of thewater.
Like we're already cash flowing three,four, $500 above what we wanted.
But our goal is always when we run ournumbers, it's can we cash flow this thing
for $200?
And the cool part of that is, is that's$200 on day one when you rent it.
(23:08):
But every year, rent goes up by 50 bucksor a hundred bucks, right?
Or rent goes up by 75 bucks or whatever ithappens to be.
So it's $200 on day one, but in year five,
you're now at $400 a door.
And by year eight, you're now cash flowing$700 per door.
And that's just if we just have normal,you know, normal growth through rental
(23:30):
income.
We've been lucky enough that in the lastcouple of years, I mean, especially coming
out of the pandemic and through thepandemic, I mean, the cost of rents just
skyrocketed on us.
I mean, we had, and they're starting tocome back.
Like we've had to rent a couple of ourrentals now.
We've had to pull back, you know, $100 and$200 a month on these rentals.
But we have to remind ourselves, yeah, butwe've almost, we almost doubled it in the
(23:53):
first five years because of where we were.
So pulling back $200, it hurts, but we'restill way far ahead of where we ever
expected to be at this point becausehouses are still hard to come by.
And are you buying your houses in cash orare you financing them?
We financed them.
(24:14):
So I have 10, I have, this is one of ourissues right now is I've used all 10 of my
loans.
And I think one of the little hacks that alot of people don't think about is you
don't have to have both you and yourspouse on the mortgage.
One of you can carry the mortgage, butboth of you, because we live in a
(24:36):
community, a community state, communityproperty state, both of you are on title.
but the mortgage can only be in one ofyour names.
And because of my job, my job inconsulting, educational consultant, I had
income, we were able to qualify for loanswhere I just using my income would qualify
(24:57):
as for these loans.
And so we've been able to have 10 loans inmy name.
That includes, we have a HELOC out on ourhouse and our primary house.
So I've got eight investment mortgages.
a HELOC and my primary are my 10 loans.
So we are in this process now oftransitioning to making on paper, because
(25:20):
it's all on paper, making on paper thatall the rental income is my wife's income
so that she can qualify for her 10 loans.
And so that's how we're doing it.
So theoretically, we could have 20 loansout.
between the two of us on 20 differentproperties.
(25:42):
We do have one property as a commercialloan because we needed to.
I was already out of loans at the time.
And so we got a commercial loan on aduplex, found a bank that would give us a
commercial loan on a duplex.
And that's working okay.
But yeah, for us, for that, that's workedout.
Most of those we've had to put down 20%.
Sorry, go ahead.
(26:04):
The other thing to consider then would berefinancing when interest rates drop.
I don't know where, if you've bought a lotin the past few years, you're probably
good.
But for us, like we're at a 5 .75.
And so rents will increase, which weactually decided not to raise this year,
just because they're already at top marketvalue.
And even a year later, it's still topmarket value.
(26:25):
So we feel good with that.
But once when we can refinance, they'll bepaying the same, if not more.
right.
we'll be paying less towards our mortgage.
And so that is an exciting feeling, eventhough we're not close to there yet, one
day when we are, right?
Because you always, you buy the house withthe current interest rates, knowing that
you're comfortable with the currentinterest rates.
And I always tell my clients that I wantyou to be in the mindset that you'll never
(26:49):
get to refinance.
So you're comfortable, we're not gonna buythis house and you're gonna be desperate
for interest rates to drop.
Yep.
happy surprise.
We're gonna be excited.
It's gonna be a good phone call to getlike, hey, it's time to refinance.
Till then though, you gotta be comfortablewith it.
And so.
And we've, we played that on this, thispiece of property we just bought out at
(27:11):
Pacific beach is out at, if anybody knowsout at Seabrook Pacific beach, Julia
posted it on our Instagram, the story ofour, our dream property.
We were just able to purchase it.
But part of the reason why we were able topurchase it is all of these second homes
in Seabrook and property out there,there's a ton of supply all of a sudden.
(27:32):
And part of it is people listening to thenews and market.
situations, but because of that, theprices have started to drop dramatically
out there.
Now we know that as soon as interest ratesdrop, that's going to change.
Those prices are going to go right backup.
So we are willing to play the real estategame of saying we want, we found our dream
(27:54):
property.
We're going to be paying 7 .2 % intereston this dream property, but we know that's
the highest to your point.
That's the highest we'll ever pay.
Yep.
and all the signs are pointing to, we wantthis thing to be around five, five and a
half percent.
As soon as it drops down to five or fiveand a half percent, that's a bonus in your
(28:15):
words.
I love that.
It's a bonus.
And we still have our dream property thatwe paid less for than somebody else is
going to pay for at five and five and ahalf percent.
So this is actually, and I love this andyou as a realtor, I'm sure I'm saying this
to, to buyers all the time.
It's actually a really good time to buy.
Yes.
your point, make those numbers work now,because you're not gonna be able to afford
(28:38):
that house when it's back down to 5 .5%,because that house is probably gonna go up
another 3%, and now it's out of reach,right?
exactly.
Yeah.
I mean, if you are waiting for the rightcircumstances, I mean, welcome to the
club.
Aren't we all for everything?
I mean, come on.
perfect?
I just needed to all be perfect.
(28:59):
It's not going to be you make it happen.
Yeah.
interest rates.
We want low prices.
We want more inventory.
But what I really want is information onhow to make today work for me right now.
I'm not going to wait on the future andwait on potential circumstances.
I'm going to create the circumstances forme.
(29:20):
I think interest rates were over 6 % whenwe got 5 .75.
We got the seller to buy down our rate.
He paid for that.
that's so great.
of our purchase price and gave us the ratethat worked for us.
And so there are options out there andthere's ways to make it work.
And as you said, like this is your dreamhome.
(29:41):
You got to deal with the purchase pricebecause you're not getting a deal with the
interest rate, which a lot of people areseeing right now.
Sellers are very well aware that interestrates are high, so they are doing more to
accommodate you.
And if you need accommodations like thatis.
It's just a game plan that needs to becreated.
I have some buyers that are buying in cashand don't need any accommodations so we
(30:03):
can look at more competitive areas.
And then I have others who need closingcosts paid for, they need a rate buy down.
And so we just create that custom gameplan on how to get you into that home and
get you the deal you need today ratherthan waiting.
So.
even, you know, with this property, webought this property for over $200 ,000
(30:23):
less than listing and it appraised for $25,000 more than what we paid.
But it's because of the situation we're inand this seller has been sitting on this
piece of property for a year.
And because he's been sitting on it for ayear, more inventory has come online.
The plots of land around them are sellingfor less and less and less, making his
(30:47):
land less and less and less.
Like the land hasn't changed.
The view of the ocean hasn't changed.
Just the market values have changed.
And so we mean, when we looked at thisproperty, we couldn't afford it at the
price that he was asking for it.
But you start looking at what's happeningand you understand how to play these
games.
And all of a sudden, you know, we went inand we're just like, if we can get this
(31:08):
for anywhere close to this price, we'll bein.
know and we were you know so yeah it'sbuilt in equity yeah
you're getting built in equity to a homeand appraiser is telling you, you got this
for a steal, then it's a great time tobuy.
There's always opportunity.
And especially to, you're right, likeinventory is still low, for sure
(31:32):
everywhere, most places, right?
But people are getting fearful and theyare selling their homes and they're
walking away from them, which is justgreat opportunity for buyers out there
that are ready to make it work.
And so it's just get your foot in the doorbecause here you are by about to build
your dream home on your dream piece ofland that you already got with built in
(31:54):
equity.
And it's from buying a literally shittycondo in Seattle that you had to put a ton
of elbow grease in and get it where youwanted it to.
And now that leverage has got you so muchcloser to your main goal, right?
Which is your forever home.
Yeah.
I mean, we, I mean, yeah, it's ourretirement home.
(32:15):
I think the home we're in right now isprobably our forever home, but even the
home we're in right now, I mean, this, theone up here on this one we have on Queen
Anne, we, it was 2016.
We were looking to move out of the condo.
So we bought the condo in 2009.
We were looking to move out of the condoand move into our first time ever into a,
you know, a single family home for us.
We lived in apartments and condos.
(32:36):
I mean, we're.
whatever time, however old we are at thispoint, 40 or something like that, about
40, and never lived in a single familyhome before.
And we were looking at it in 2016, and youmight remember the market in 2016 was just
on fire, especially up here in Seattle.
And we had this conversation of we have tojump now if we ever are going to be able
(32:57):
to afford a single family home in theSeattle area.
If we don't jump fast, the market willoutpace what we can make.
And we could see that, right?
We know what our income is.
We can see the market blowing up off theother end.
And we just knew there was no way we couldchase the prices that were happening here
in the greater Seattle area.
So we decided we were going to jump.
(33:18):
Now we missed out on a coupleopportunities.
Like one house we put an offering on endedup going for over $300 ,000 in cash.
This is Seattle in 2016.
It was just a nightmare.
And we found the house that we're in now.
And again, it was...
I mean, you could live in it, which is theonly house we've ever bought that you
(33:38):
could move in and live in it, but it wasstill in pretty rough shape.
But I mean, it didn't have holes in theceiling.
There wasn't a fire in it.
I mean, I've got so many stories ofeverything else we bought, you know,
squatters already living in it like everyother home we bought.
But the problem was is on the backside,because we live up on Queen Han, it's
about a 15 foot drop down to the alleyway.
And the previous owners had decided toempty their hot tub into the hundred year
(34:04):
old retaining wall.
And so the retaining wall had given out.
And most buyers, especially up here onQueen Anne, just want turnkey.
And so the only way we could afford thishouse was because nobody was willing to do
the work.
And this is where as real estateinvestors, if you're willing to do the
work, there are opportunities here foryou.
(34:25):
So we put an offer in and then we went outand we had three companies give us bids to
rebuild this back wall.
it was going to cost around $80 ,000.
So then we got an $80 ,000 reduction onthe price of the house.
And all of that allowed us to actually buythe home.
Right?
So we bought this house for just about, Idon't know, I was right around a million
(34:45):
dollars over the years.
Now we've done during COVID, we did a fullthree floor renovation.
So it is brand spanking new.
And now we're on the other side of it.
We almost have a million dollars in equityin this house.
Right?
It's just, but the,
The opportunity was there.
Now, here's the crazy part.
You talk about taking a jump.
We bought this house and we, like, nobodyshould have sold us this house.
(35:08):
We bought this house and on the day ofclosing, it took every, because we did 20
% down commercial financing, but we had 57cents left in our bank account when we
closed.
And we've done that twice now where we'vebought properties and we're down to like
pennies in the bank account.
But if you know it's there, if you knowhow to run the numbers, if you can see the
(35:30):
equity out the other end, it's worthtaking those risks, right?
And they're calculated risks.
that.
Yeah.
There's a lot of stigma against like beinghouse poor, right?
Like people, I hear that a lot.
Like I don't want to be house poor.
And I get it.
I don't ever argue with people when theysay that, especially potential clients,
right?
(35:50):
But I do say like, I'm house poor.
Like we went from renting a thousanddollars a month for a three bed, one bath,
to, you know, even though we just pay halfour less than half of our mortgage, it's
still over two grand.
We doubled our biggest in
our biggest expense and it's been hard.
It has been, it's taken everything we'vegot.
We both have worked really hard to makemore money because we have to and it
(36:13):
happened fast too.
It was the other mortgage that we wereunder contract for was going to be better.
And then when that fell apart and we hadto go for this one, I knew we just had to
take the leap.
And so right now there are moments wherewe feel, oof, like, you know, this, this
is a lot.
Like we made a huge jump.
right, because that's the word you keptusing and it's a fact like it's a jump.
(36:35):
And, but I just can't shake the feelingthat the future version of us are going to
be so grateful that we ate top ramen alittle more and, you know, worked a little
couple extra side jobs got the overtimedone like we did what we needed to do now
so that we can buy the dream propertylater so that we can have more of that
(36:56):
comfort but.
Yeah, so I love that you shared thatbecause, you know, it goes back to how we
started this episode with their peoplelove to act like this is sexy and
glamorous and it came to me sure.
Selling sunset is a show.
It's a thing, but it's not always andyou're not feeling you're not behind.
(37:16):
You're not a loser.
If it doesn't feel sexy and glamorous allthe time, I beg to differ that you are
normal and you are on track.
If it feels.
ugly and rough sometimes like it.
It's a sacrifice.
It's it's a push.
It's hard to be in a mindset of let's belet's eat top ramen every day this week.
(37:37):
And let's say no to all the fun thingsthat our friends are doing.
And let's you know, put our money intothis investment that's going to be long
term success and not short term well,which I think short term wealth is also
all over social media.
There's I
true.
every video I see it's like I posted thisone video 24 hours later, I'm viral and
(38:01):
making this money and like that'll neverbe on our podcast.
That's not what we're here to.
We won't give you short success.
Yeah.
Yeah.
Yeah.
And I, and I say, I say this too, and I'mdoing, you know, things that, real estate
get togethers is it's really a wave andyou, you learn, you learn over time where
you are in the wave.
And for my wife and I, you know, we hadjust come out of the wave.
(38:24):
This is fantastic.
We weren't looking for this really lookingfor a piece, our dream property yet.
We, this was supposed to be five yearsdown the road.
And just, you know, this last yearhappened to us and things happened in our
lives.
We were just like, nope, it's time tostart looking for this.
But we had just come out of, we were,well, we had just come out of, we, for
seven years, we didn't travel with ourfriends.
As a couple who've been to over 55countries, for us not to travel for seven
(38:50):
years, people don't, like, this is, it'slike people not going to Starbucks for
seven years, right?
If that's your thing.
Like for us.
And we didn't and our friends were justlike, you people, you don't do anything
anymore.
We're like, no, but that's not right now.
That's not our focus.
And we had just come out of that to wherewe started traveling again.
We're starting to travel the world and dothe things that we love.
And we've just put ourselves by buyingthis property and wanting to build our
(39:13):
dream home, put ourselves back into thatdip.
But we're okay with that to your point.
We'll eat a little more top ramen.
We'll take few, we'll take less trips.
We'll do less things with friends becauseonce we get through the dip,
that next rise is even better than thelast rise, right?
But you go through these cycles.
Nothing ever constantly goes up orconstantly goes down, but you have to
(39:34):
understand where you are, and on the downslopes, you gotta grind it out.
You grind it out, because you know thatthe bottom's coming and you're gonna get
back up, right?
You're gonna eat a little more top ramen,you're not gonna go hang out with your
friends, you gotta do what you gotta do tomake it through.
But when you make it through, it's betterthan when it was when you went in, right?
And that's the grind, and I find so manypeople give up in the grind.
(39:55):
Yes.
People give up in the grind.
It's the breaking point and it's, youknow, I feel like we're kind of there
right now where we said no to a wedding,right?
And we, we eloped instead.
We're doing a little backyard celebration.
So my parents are included, but that was afinancial choice more than anything, even
though I'm not the big wedding.
I don't have the Pinterest boards and thethings that a lot of people do, which is
(40:17):
great.
It just wasn't my thing.
Either way, it was my husband's.
He wanted a big wedding, but I said, no,we're going to get a house.
We're going to, we're not going to co-mingle those.
expenses, those savings, right?
Cause everyone says that they say, well wewon't combine them.
We can do both and you don't, you do itall on the wedding.
And so we chose to do it all on the house.
(40:38):
And I've also, I've never had a passport.
I've never left the country yet, which Iwant to so bad, but it's just, this is the
season of saying no to a lot of thosethings.
This is the season of working, of gettingthose houses and just building my
portfolio.
Like my goal is to...
have a strong portfolio where when I amtraveling, it is without the stress of how
(41:01):
am I gonna pay for this when I get back orpay off this credit card, you know, and
things like that and teach their own forsure.
I don't think there's, I don't think I'mright in my process.
I think that it's just my process.
And I think that I...
I watched my parents work really hard whenI was younger, like throughout my
childhood and my life.
They worked multiple jobs every day of theweek, constantly at Disney World.
(41:22):
My mom would be literally working.
She'd bring her laptop into Disney Worldand we'd sit at the Starbucks and she
would get stuff done and they worked sohard.
And I just hope by that stage for me, I'mnot having to do it that hard.
It's it'll look different, right?
It'll still be hard work, but just not.
So I'm trying to just dedicate my 20s and30s to just.
(41:44):
grinding it out, getting it done.
a good thing to do.
You know, my wife and I didn't take ahoneymoon.
You know, that was me and but we justcelebrated our 25th wedding anniversary
and we got to spend 10 days in theMaldives.
Now, if you tell me, you know, if you'dhave told me at 22, you're not going to
take a honeymoon now.
But in 25 years, you will have builtenough wealth together that you're going
(42:04):
to take 10 days in the Maldives.
I would have given I didn't know that atthe time that that's the outcome was going
to be.
But to your point, we made a consciousdecision to say we've got other priorities
right now.
on building our own wealth, even when wegot married, you know, at 22, that these
are our priorities.
We can forfeit going on a honeymoonbecause we couldn't afford 10 days in the
(42:25):
mall.
We didn't even know the Maldives was acountry when we were 22, right?
And we just spent 10 days on an overwaterbungalow in one of the most beautiful
places in the world, right?
So, but this is the thing.
And I think, you know, your story is thatyou're at the beginning stages of that,
right?
You forfeit the big wedding, you and,
at some point you're going to have someincredible things where you're going to be
(42:46):
like, my gosh, we gave that up because thething that we were able to do is
exponentially way better than whateverthat one day at $10 ,000 meant for you.
You're still married.
You still love your husband.
Everything is still the same.
It just wasn't big massive over the topand everybody makes those sacrifices.
And I think if anybody take, if you takeanything away from this podcast, it's that
(43:07):
there are multiple different ways to dothis.
Don't be, don't get yourself.
so focused into everybody else doingeverything on social media.
You've got to find what's the right pathfor you, right?
You've got to find what's the right pathfor you.
Reach out to people, go to coachingsessions, find a mentor, listen to
podcasts like this.
(43:28):
And you know, if this is the first time ofyou listening to a podcast, this is Julia
and I, this is like, we're not glamorizingthis.
Like you only get to work one or two hoursa week.
Like it's a grind.
Like life is a grind and real estate cansupport you.
but it's gonna be a grind as well.
And just understand that going forward.
But find your path.
There's a lot of path.
There's so many ways to do this, to buildlong -term wealth through real estate, but
(43:53):
it's not gonna be easy.
Absolutely, and I will say to just trustthe process trust your process if you're
feeling behind and All you have in youright now is to just listen to this
podcast listen to real estate investingpodcast Then that's enough you are
gathering information which is gonna serveyou in the future And I think that you
(44:15):
know like the newsletter is seeing 225doors.
I thought man.
I'm a loser I'm not doing enough, but weare we are exactly where we're meant to be
right now.
It's so cheesy
but it's so true and just gatheringinformation is more than a lot of people
are doing.
A lot of people have succumbed to the ideaof I'm a renter, I'll be a renter forever.
(44:35):
It's just the market sucks and there's noopportunities and I'm gonna wait for a
crash.
If you're already outside of that and youalready just wanna learn about what is
possible, you're already ahead of the gameand you're gonna get there and yeah, we're
proud of you.
I love that.
What a great way to end this episode.
Julia, thanks for taking time.
We need to do more of these where you andI just talk about something like a
(44:57):
newsletter that hit our inbox today andthe way that we reacted to it and our
different mindsets.
So it's great.
But hope everybody enjoyed this.
Julie and I just talking about, I don'tknow, random stuff.
If you like this, if you have something,if you have something you want to share
with us, of course, you can always reachout to us.
Info at wsreip .com.
(45:17):
or you can fill out the contact form overthere on our website, wsreip .com.
Julia, thanks so much.
It was great having a conversation withyou today.
Thank you, Jo.
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